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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24406843">I Informed You Thusly</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/izumi2/pseuds/izumi2'>izumi2</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Random Stories (Civil War Team Iron Man) [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Civil War Team Iron Man, Not Steve Friendly, Salty!Author, This one is reaaaally salty, not team Cap friendly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:55:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,152</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24406843</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/izumi2/pseuds/izumi2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>5 Times Team Cap didn’t Listen to Tony on Ridiculous Matters and 1 Time they (finally) Admitted that they should have had (because the matter was anything but ridiculous).</p><p>~*~<br/>"Under normal circumstances I'd say I told you so. But, as I have told so with such vehemence and frequency already the phrase has lost all meaning. Therefore, I will be replacing it with the phrase, I informed you thusly."<br/>~Sheldon Cooper (The Big Bang Theory).</p><p>~*~<br/>Civil War Team Iron Man<br/>Moderated because of trolls</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Random Stories (Civil War Team Iron Man) [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1073379</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>108</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1526</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>I Needed a Laugh Today</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I Informed You Thusly</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One:</p><p>“So... just a tip: wear sunglass. They are a cool way not to squint. LOL.”</p><p>Rhodey rolled his eyes. “Tony, for the millionth time, that doesn’t work when out of texts.”</p><p>The billionaire just pouted a bit. “Yes, they do!”</p><p>“What are you talking about, Stark?” Steve huffed, already tired of the display right before another performance of dancing monkeys. If only he knew that working for Fury would end up in a stage…</p><p>“For the show. Wear sunglasses. They are vital for the continual health of your eyes.” The inventor gave a megawatt smile.</p><p>The airman beside him groaned. “There will be camera flashes. It’s a good idea.” He shrugged to them.</p><p>Clint and Natasha exchanged a look full of disdain and Steve was inclined to agree. Sunglasses of all things!</p><p>Bruce bit his lip. He could <strong><em>not</em></strong> pull off sunglasses even on beaches, let alone pairing them up with a jacket suit.</p><p>~*~</p><p>“And now I present you: the Avengers!” The poor man barely managed to get the last word out before screams almost deafened even people watching from their homes.</p><p>“Tony Stark! He is the man of tomorrow, he—”</p><p>“Yes, yes. You know who I am.” He stepped out and Tony went about with the same showman tendencies he had since teen years. Long used to the screams and the flashes, he gave a peace sign and took his place.</p><p>The announcer knew that the public was about to lose it, so he went off fast now.</p><p>“Steve Rogers! Captain America! Directly from the forties when… and where he led the Howling Commandos against the forces of HYDRA!”</p><p>“Natasha Romanoff, the infamous and famous Black Widow. S.H.I.E.L.D Agent extraordinaire. Clint Barton, the Hawkeye, never misses a target! And Bruce Banner! Seven PhDs, too many to count Majors and Minors. His thesis revolutionized physics! His projects are the definition of humanitarian. Clean water. Enough food. Medicine. Improvement in lifestyle and the Incredible Hulk!”</p><p>Steve took one step from behind the curtains and almost tripped over his own feet. The noise was making his ears ring, the flashes forced him to shield his eyes with both hands for they were coming from everywhere. He knocked the announcer off his feet and barely managed to apologize over the screams and laugher.</p><p>Natasha wasn’t faring much better. Her scowl would frighten all those who saw it, but she was also blocking the lights with her forearm. It wasn’t just the flashes, but the absurdly bright lights from the stage itself was competing with the blasted cameras. With a snarl, she hid herself behind one of her teammates. It would only be quite a few minutes later that her sight would be recovered enough, and she would find herself behind Stark, of all people!</p><p>Clint, seeing the state the rest of his team was in, carefully put his hands in front of his face before going out. And boy was he glad for doing so.</p><p>Bruce was adorably self-conscious in Ray-Bans that he borrowed from Tony. It fit him strangely well even if the scientist clearly didn’t think so, much to the cooing audience.</p><p>Fifteen minutes later the questions – only answered by Bruce and Tony – were over and the Avengers reunited in another room nursing raging headaches. The geniuses exchanged a look and Tony bit his lip. It was almost physically painful to fight back the urge to say ‘I told you so’ but his teammates were in pain and, for people like Natasha and Clint, feeling this vulnerable couldn’t possibly be good. So he decided not to bring up the fact that they could at the very least have been polite when refusing to heed his advice instead of chalking it up to his ‘need to showoff’.</p><p>Why would wear sunglasses even allude to his supposed need of ‘showing off’ he doesn’t know. It was like saying that Steve’s haircut was a play to show off his patriotic side.</p><p>~*~</p><p>Two:</p><p>“With us… Tony Stark, he is Iron Man. The man of tomorrow that—”</p><p>“You know who I am, let’s go with the show.” Tony grinned at the cameras.</p><p>Steve gritted his teeth as Tony, once again, rudely interrupted the presenter. The man was just doing his job! And Stark wasn’t making it any easier. The super soldier sent an apologetic look towards the clearly harried announcer but looked in confusion at his relief. He squared his shoulders and decided that this couldn’t go on.</p><p>“Look, all I’m saying is that you gotta show a little more respect. I know that these people can be annoying, but they already have a horrible job and are probably paid horribly as well. It’s on us to make their lives just a little easier, alright?” Steve sent, what he hoped it was, a chiding look towards the billionaire who looked back confusedly and… was that amusement?</p><p>Of course, why not? Steve stood with his initial assessment: can’t take anything seriously.</p><p>“So… from the on and on that you went now… you want me to let the announcer say his piece… and not interrupt him?” The inventor sat back and fought a smirk.</p><p>“Yes.” Steve sighed.</p><p>Tony eyed him before asking. “Steve… do you remember when Bruce is presented?”</p><p>The super soldier frowned. “What of it?”</p><p>The brunette’s eyebrows raised. “Ok… you do know that the next few interviews are more… scientifically inclined, right? I mean we are going to be interviewed by some real eggheads, to put it.”</p><p>“What does that have to do with anything?” Steve massaged his temples already at his limit which Tony noticed.</p><p>Said man shrugged, seeing this as an amusing opportunity no matter how it ended. “Steve… I just want to save our time.”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter…” The blond took a deep breath and tried again. “You are being… patronizing… and arrogant.”</p><p>Tony shrugged again, unable to completely fight off his smirk this time. “Ok.”</p><p>“Ok?” The blond blinked. Barely able to believe his ears. Stark never just… ‘okayed’ anything.</p><p>“Yep. No skin off my back. I could use a little break.”</p><p>Not understanding the last bit but unwilling to risk the man changing his mind, Steve relaxed. “Ok.” He parroted instead.</p><p>Their next, and thankfully, second to last, interview was that afternoon. And Steve even went with a small smile since at least this time he wouldn’t be feeling horribly embarrassed by his teammate’s rudeness.</p><p>“With us… Tony Stark!” Steve sent the man a warning look and only got a raised eyebrow in response but otherwise the inventor didn’t make a move to interrupt and Steve relaxed again and turned to the announcer that could finally do his job. “The Futurist! Inventor and leading expert on artificial intelligences at the mere age of seventeen! Seven PhDs in various STEM fields, but what earned him the nickname of the da Vinci of Our Time is what he created, his engineering feats. There is no field he didn’t master. The fastest cars, the most potent jets, helicopters, submarines, yachts… air, sea or land! What is left? Space! In talks with TESLA, Tony Stark is in collaboration with Elon Musk to explore what the stars have to offer. But what is out there won’t take precedent for what we could improve here on our planet!</p><p>Sustainable green energy is the next big talk! Tony Stark started to invent at the age of four, and at the age of seven his first engine. But nothing is good enough that Stark Industries can’t improve, the new engines are powerful enough—” And on and on it went.</p><p>Steve turned to look, completely desperate, towards the billionaire. Tony, for his troubles, was sitting on the ground and typing on his cellphone, drinking a cup of coffee that an assistant just delivered to him. He even made himself comfortable. Leaning back on a pillow, he stretched his legs out and crossed his ankles. He finally tucked his cellphone in his pocket and adjusted his pillow before taking off his sunglasses, crossing his arms and closing his eyes for what looked about to become a power a nap.</p><p>“—and not only did he graduate <em>summa cum laude</em>, but already with his three first PhDs under his belt. His thesis on the use of nanotubes to be used on the material of—”</p><p>~*~</p><p>“You could have given a better warning than that.” Bruce smiled at the almost hour-long YouTube video what was supposed to be over in fifteen minutes.</p><p>“Where is the fun in that? Besides, yours was almost just as long and… you know it would be so terribly rude to interrupt.” Tony waged his finger, mockingly chiding his fellow scientist.</p><p>~*~</p><p>Three:</p><p>Tony was an attention whore. But probably not in the way most people would assume.</p><p>He loved when Pepper took a week off just to spend half an hour with him in the hot tub every day. Or when Rhodey would concede to ridiculous selfies and his choice of horrible takeout and his even worse choice of movies. Tony smiled for the whole day when Happy would show up in khakis and polo and let Tony prepare lunch.</p><p>Interviews and presentations? He was numb. He didn’t love it, but he was long since past dreading or hating it.</p><p>That was before Orkut, and then Facebook, and then Instagram and then Twitter. Tony never understood how he lived before # and @ were a thing. They made life so ridiculously easier that he wanted to cry for his naïve twenty-one year old self that had to address the public every other day because of something or the other, even when they were good things like the opening of a new headquarters so more jobs.</p><p>Now? He can make the board happy and the HR happy and PR happy from his bedroom. He just needs a Twitter and Instagram account and done. A live in Instagram will make PR back off from spamming his email for a whole month if he does it right.</p><p>Which was something that the Avengers didn’t seem to grasp.</p><p>“Were the interviews not enough?” Steve had his “Captain America is disappointed in You” face.</p><p>“I mean they were, and I can always use the nap.” Came the casual reply.</p><p>Bruce had to bite his lip not to laugh and the rest of them all made faces. The worst of it, particularly to Natasha, is that Tony always interrupted the list and slept through the presenter showing his accomplishments, so she couldn’t call out on his ego as his actions were the opposite of it.</p><p>“Look, Steve,” Bruce tried. “It’s like when you’re talking someone armed not to kill you or someone else. You start to say things about yourself, like… uh…”</p><p>Tony smirked a bit warily. Two things went through his mind. The first was that Bruce was adorable if he thought that Steve ever received more command and formal training than climb that wall and craw beneath that net and this is how you jump and punch and kick. How to be robbed was actually the very first thing that Rhodey taught him when his friend started to climb the ranks. He knew that Tony Stark was a target for his money, for revenge, for whatever up to and included that he was the son of Howard Stark. At the start of this whole team thing, Tony was confused why that not seemed to be case with Steve and the more differences he started to spot between Steve and other COs he met over the years, the more he truly started to think about his origins. Not all of it could be chucked to “he is from the 40s”.</p><p>And also, that Bruce put himself in a corner. Now his only choices were to recite all the uncomfortably personal stuff that they learned about each other through a report in a file or about himself. Neither of those were his comfort zone.</p><p>But to Bruce’s credit he chose the later.</p><p>“Say that you are an armed and I am in your way and you have no problem shooting me. Mind you, if I wasn’t… if I wasn’t the Hulk, if I was just some ordinary human being that would need emergency care if the bullet hit me. Or outright kill me if it hit a lethal area. You start to say that my name is Robert Bruce Banner, my mom’s name was Rebecca, I went to college in Caltech, but I decided to be a scientist long before that. I like yellow and dogs are my favorite animal. This humanizes you, suddenly you are no longer an obstacle, someone faceless and nameless, but you have a life that you’ll leave behind if you die. The same principle is applicable here. If people know that you’re not perfect, that you are human, they will not assume that you'll never make mistakes."</p><p>Tony wasn’t surprised by the frown on the other three’s faces. None of them had any formal, official training and just the thought of those three in one of those seminars of self-defense where the first lessons were all about how to let yourself be robbed was so funny that Tony had to cough into his hand not to show his amusement.</p><p>“Look, we are not going to be dancing monkeys, alright? The people know that we’re on their side, there is no need for them to know how we take our coffee.”</p><p>If that was supposed to be a dig about that poll hat trended on Twitter for a week straight about what kind of coffee Tony Stark likes best it missed by a mile and half.</p><p>Whatever. Maybe Rogers was right and the Spy Twins could survive on Captain America’s reputation alone, what did Tony know?</p><p>Then DC happened. Lagos, Bucharest and Leipzig happened all within the same week.</p><p>As Tony saw he bloodbath between Nigeria, Romania and Germany he concluded that the Rogues never heard of feet of clay.</p><p>~*~</p><p>Four:</p><p>Tony took a deep breath and tried again. “What I’m trying to say is that if you don’t trademark the name “Captain America” anybody could do anything to it. Right now, it’s the big companies that are making the most profit off…”</p><p>“Profit… sometimes I think that it is all you think about.” Steve groaned in exasperation.</p><p>The inventor rolled his eyes. “Money makes the world go round, Rogers. Not only would you benefit from it, but you could also ensure that the money could go to the proper venues. Since the forties, there is simply no one who owns the “Captain America” name. The comics, the toys, the costumes, you name it, can be made and sold and called of whatever by whoever since the Army never went around to trademark the name. But now that you are flesh and blood, the suits are talking about it. Patenting the name to be the sole beneficiary. You can still argue against it, tell them that you are Captain America and that it isn’t just a name but… you have been out and about for almost a year, the window is closing.”</p><p>The blond looked at him completely incredulously and Tony could only sigh. He bet that all the “Man out of Time” heard was…</p><p>“Money, money, money…” Tony bit his cheek, fighting the urge to start humming the ABBA song. “That’s truly all you care about! It makes me uncomfortable, but the kids are happy! They are inspired! Who cares about anything else?” And he stormed out.</p><p>The businessman rubbed his temples and didn’t even need to see the latest ping his StarkPhone made to know what J.A.R.V.I.S wanted him to see: some big company, or the Army, or whoever, just got the rights to the “Captain America” name. The sad part is that Steve could still press for it, could still argue that he was Captain America, but Tony Stark wasn’t the only one competent in PR in the world. People didn’t have to be geniuses to know that they should go in front of a camera and say with all the words that Steve Rogers wasn’t interested in owning the “Captain America” name. Perhaps – most likely – the public would see the whole thing as “Aw, chucks!” routine but the media is fickle and so was the public that didn’t personally know their heroes.</p><p>It didn’t surprise Tony at all when, a few years later, Rogers was tearing his hair out trying to find the revenue and funds to keep the Avengers going.</p><p>How he could do nothing when there were articles and news calling Captain America a traitor, a liar, a murderer, a thief and a terrorist. Because, by law, “Captain America” was a brand, not a person. No one was slandering. It was like calling Barbie a terrorist…</p><p>How all the profits made by Captain American merchandise was being invested in the veteran’s centers and questions being thrown around about why Steve Rogers never did the same? Why wouldn’t he do anything for his fellow soldiers? Was he even a soldier?</p><p>But after almost twelve hours in subzero temperatures in Siberia, freshly out of the hospital and freshly out of care… Tony Stark could barely summon enough energy to scoff.</p><p>~*~</p><p>Five:</p><p>This was only the third time Tony came to the Compound and once again…</p><p>“You guys do know that these will end up clogging the sink, right?” but no one answered him.</p><p>The problem was that SI was really big on green energy and being eco-friendly. The water had purifying system that cycled it back.</p><p>After everything, after Thanos, after Tony sold the Compound to the UN’s Accords and rebuilt his Malibu Mansion, he completely ignored the call at three fricking A.M about how Rogers and Maximoff got a face full of coffee grounds to their faces when taking a shower and that the kitchen sink was overflowing with dirty water. The redudancy was necessary at that point.</p><p>Not his Compound, not his team, not his problem.</p><p>Tony buried himself deeper in the dozens of pillows and Friday took care to screen his calls more thoroughly in the future. Just because someone said it was an emergency, doesn’t mean that it was. Friday honestly didn’t know that “emergency” was subject of personal view.</p><p>~*~</p><p>+1:</p><p>Bruce and Strange ended their spiel and all Tony could think to say was, “Mood”.</p><p>“Dr. Stark, this is serious.” Strange reproached.</p><p>“With all due respect, Dr. Strange and I’m really sorry you and Mr. Wong will have to hear this but… Bruce… Bruce Bear, my Science Bro… you’re telling me that the guy that sent Loki is coming back with another armada, correct?”</p><p>Bruce didn’t like the smirk on Tony’s face one bit. “Yes.”</p><p>Tony’s smirk widened to a smile. “Damn, if only someone said that with a little bit more of forewarning, right?”</p>
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